


we two together

by anderfels



Series: what stranger miracles [2]
Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Animal Death, Blood, Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Canon-Typical Violence, Diaspora, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Flirting, Fluff, Historical References, Humor, M/M, Minor Violence, Mutual Pining, Native American/First Nations Cultures, Native American/First Nations History, Period-Typical Racism, Pining, Pre-Relationship, Racist Language, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, bros that kill poachers together stay together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-10-04 10:08:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17302667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anderfels/pseuds/anderfels
Summary: Morning dawns on Horseshoe Overlook with as much grace as Uncle after too many drinks, loud and clumsy and the sort of thing you don’t particularly want to look at for too long in case you go blind, which may in fact be a blessing. It’s hard to tell.Arthur and Charles go hunting together after Sean's party in Chapter 2, and Arthur learns a lot more about Charles as they trail some poachers.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> here we are again, gay cowboys attempting to flirt with each other. i really don't know how a ten minute side activity in game became this monster, but listen. cowboys are cool.  
> thank you all so much for the positive response for my previous offering! it really means so much to me ♥  
> it's not necessary to read _'and i looking up at the stars'_ first. although this takes place the morning after, i think most things should make sense even without context.
> 
> anyway, i really hope you enjoy reading!

__

_ Once Paumanok,  
When the lilac-scent was in the air and Fifth-month grass was growing,  
Up this seashore in some briers,  
Two feather'd guests from Alabama, two together _

Morning dawns on Horseshoe Overlook with as much grace as Uncle after too many drinks, loud and clumsy and the sort of thing you don’t particularly want to look at for too long in case you go blind, which may in fact be a blessing. It’s hard to tell.

The sun rises before anyone, too bright even when it first breaks the horizon over the Lannahechee far to the east. It rolls stubbornly above the Heartlands and continues, and the night shadow over the plains is lessened with every minute, unforgiving sunshine spilling through Twin Stack Pass, flooding the Dakota valley, and westwards into the forests of West Elizabeth.

Horseshoe basks, laid out in the splendid morning, unable to hide as soon as the light clears the covering of oaks and sycamores protecting the camp from the trail. This despite the amount of blankets heaped over sleeping heads, the makeshift eye-masks made of shirt sleeves and socks, the only refuge of those who have no tent and sleep beneath the open sky. Beautiful and humbling, at any other time than the morning after the night before. When to be woken by the incessant, unsympathetic sun at 5 in the morning is decidedly _not_.

Arthur sleeps for as long as he can humanly manage, Charles notices, despite his body waking him, as it always does, at 6 o’clock sharp, to piss and pray for some more sleep, collapsing back into his pillow face-first, prostrate before the unmerciful god that is dawn to a hungover man. 

Charles conversely is awake before anyone, which isn’t rare. Busies himself with the morning’s first pot of coffee, and boiling clean water to replace the wagon canteens and washbasins around camp. Taima is groomed and loosely tacked up ready for the day, and hay bales are strewn about for the other horses.

It’s several hours more than usual spent alone, in the liminal space between dawn and wakefulness, the day having started and yet no one else having risen with it. Charles doesn’t mind. His half bottle of whiskey was painfully conservative compared to the others’ drinking habits, and it’s no question they could all benefit from a day of rest. Or a week.

No matter. The day blooms, yellow and gold, painting the land and sky with saturated colour. Fertile green spreads over the grasslands and forests to the west and north, splintered only by the jarring cliffs and rock terraces, abrupt and misshapen, the white blue Dakota carving the silt and sand in the valley below. Spring has settled bright and lively in the land here. The only reminder of the snow they had run to, the suffocating dazzling snow, are the darker forests on the far horizon, the emerald pines and firs, barely visible. The mountains lie in state beyond; a cold and colourless memory.

Except for Arthur, perhaps. Colter had sapped all pigment from the world for those few weeks, except… Arthur’s blue furred coat pulled high over his chin. Arthur’s black hat tipped against the wind chill, pink nose and cheeks and tips of ears unprotected by blonde brown hair. Arthur’s white breath held between chapped red lips, forget-me-not blue eyes unblinking as he had focused on the doe by the river. Eyes that had closed in something close to reverence as she died, peaceful, Arthur’s black gloved palm resting on her tawny shoulder, one clean arrow shot through her head, just beneath her ear.

Arthur is the colour in that memory.

Are his eyes more forget-me-not, or flax flower? 

Doesn’t matter. They’re blue, and beautiful.

Charles occupies himself. Cleans the guard rifles, picks up the littered evidence of the previous night’s good times - the bottles discarded around the campfire, the odd cork and bottle cap buried in the short grass, the half deck of cards spilled across and tumbled under the poker table. He sips his coffee as he stokes the campfire, built back up from the night’s glowing embers, loses Arthur’s memory in the routine of the familiar, and then in the hiss of fat in a heavy skillet, the smell of cornmeal batter. His father had always called them johnnycakes, but it was Charles’ mother that had taught him to make them, as a staple cornbread of maize flour and shortening, and it was her recipe he knew better than most anything else.

Perhaps it’s sad, that the few memories he has of her are all so...modest. But to Charles, they’re more precious than anything. Often the most treasured memories are the least grand, he supposes.

Hosea is first to join him at the fire, sounding only slightly grumpy. He’s grateful for a johnnycake, drizzled with a spoon of honey, and drinks his coffee with Charles in companionable silence while the others slowly begin to rouse.

“It’s fresh,” Charles says, Pearson eyeing the basin of water on the chuckwagon table with suspicion. He seems to deflate slightly with relief, and fills a discarded whiskey bottle from the basin, downing the water as quickly as he can swallow.

“Ugh,” Pearson sighs, roughly wiping the back of his mouth with his hand. “Thanks Charles,” he says, voice hoarse, face red and blotchy. “You’re a godsend.”

Charles waves a hand. “Just an early riser.”

“He made breakfast too,” says Hosea, gesturing with his bowl of cornbread pancake, wheezing his laughter. “Imagine if we were paying him.”

Pearson grunts and huffs with every breath, like a great animal being prodded into movement against its wishes, splashing water on his face. “You after my job, Mister Smith? Huh?” His laugh is the sound of air from squeezed bellows, as is Hosea’s.

“Seems thankless,” Charles says dryly from the campfire, and Pearson laughs again.

“Quite right there,” he says, and turns away to start his own morning routine. “Quite right.”

The others drift in and out, as they wake or are woken by someone else drinking their coffee too loudly for a hungover head to cope with, the only few not suffering the after effects of the previous night seemingly Mrs Adler, who spends most of her time as far away from everyone as she can get without falling off the cliff, and Charles himself.

Even Kieran, the O’Driscoll kid, seems to be quieter than usual, downing two cups of coffee despite the expression he makes at the taste. Like burnt horse hair, he says.

The johnnycakes are popular, and Charles leaves the skillet warming and the bowl of batter in Pearson’s care, in case anyone yet to wake wants one. He passes Arthur’s wagon on his path around the camp, eyes lingering on the boots fallen sideways on the floor, the discarded shirt he’d been wearing the previous night thrown over the chest at the end of the bed. Arthur still has his jeans on, suspenders hanging awkwardly from their clips, half-folded under his stomach. The ratio between his hips and shoulders catches Charles’ attention for a second more than it should, like something sculpted from marble in renaissance Italy by men with flowery names, Arthur’s arms both folded up and under his pillow, the thin cotton of his union suit stretched at the seams across his back and biceps. Obscene, frankly.

Charles exhales and looks away, leaves Arthur to his sleep. He needs it more than any of them.

Arthur is a good man. Despite what he himself would say. Stubborn and surprising and slumbering inside his own self. But a good man. If only he’d see it.

It’s closer to noon than not when Arthur finally loses his battle with the daylight. Rises like a great bear from hibernation, with weary haggard slowness, his shaggy fur ungroomed and belly empty.

By now, Charles knows Arthur’s morning routine by heart, Arthur a creature of habit like he is himself. He washes, shaves every other day or so, rinses his mouth with tooth powder, only looks in the hand mirror on his washstand when he has to - one of several rites of self-destruction Arthur has that Charles has noticed, and all that make his chest hurt. His pistol belt sits low on his hips, satchel on his left shoulder, journal tucked safely inside. He never does up the top button of his shirts and often leaves the second button open too, rolls his sleeves above his elbows. Coffee is always first on his agenda, black but sweet, then his horse is groomed, and the wagon horses too more often than not, all checked over and loved as if they were his own. If Charles or Kieran hasn’t seen to it, he distributes hay between the geldings and few mares, picks out hooves, rakes manure, chops firewood. Greets everyone with a lopsided smile and a “Mornin’”, tips his hat to the ladies, goes out of his way to make sure everyone is up and well.

A good man; an odd patchwork quilt of a man. The head of a predator and the heart of something soft. An artist, a romantic, the most gentle and vulnerable soul, wrapped in the hide and coat and teeth of a wolf, and even he himself is unsure where the seams are, or if there are any seams at all.

Arthur drinks his coffee leant against Magpie’s hitching post, having tacked her up for the day, hat low over his eyes as if to shut out the sunlight, scuffing his boot heel against the grass. He scratches his chin, then goes back to absently stroking Magpie’s neck as she attempts to find out what’s in Arthur’s coffee cup, and whether she wants it for herself. Charles can see Arthur’s smile from across the camp, from his seat on one of the crates forming the corner of his and Hosea’s lean-to. It’s not too much for him to see Arthur in the edge of his vision without turning. How easily he smiles with his mare. More easily than with any actual person.

“You headin’ out?” Hosea’s voice startles him more than it should, and the small smirk on the old man’s face tells him Hosea knows exactly what was distracting him.

“Oh- Yeah.” Charles clears his throat, and gestures with the whetstone in his one hand, his upturned knife in the other. “Hunting trip.”

“Deer?”

“Bison.”

Hosea hums, impressed, gingerly sits down in the chair across from their bedrolls, wincing, rubbing idly at his knees. A book is in his free hand, the cover well-worn. “Dangerous for a man alone,” he says, looking up at Charles on the crate.

Charles likes Hosea. A man of conflict. Pragmatic and intelligent, fierce, kind, and protective. Consummate con-artist. There’s a lot of Hosea in Arthur. As he thinks it, Charles instinctively glances back at him, over by the hitching posts still, sipping his coffee. Hosea notices, but stays quiet.

“For sure,” Charles says, deliberately concentrating on his knife again, stroking the stone over the blade. One bison could easily kill a lone hunter, his horse and dogs too, let alone the herd. “Rewarding, though.”

“You gonna take Arthur?”

Charles blinks. Hosea’s looking at him. There’s no mockery in his expression, only polite curiosity. A genuine question. “Y’know, when we went out to the uh...East Grizzlies the other week - did he tell you? Tailin’ a bear. Mean bastard, it was. But he would not shut up about you. You been teachin’ him to hunt, I gather?”

“A little,” Charles says, interest piqued. “Just tracking, using a bow.”

“Wouldn’t shut up about it.” Hosea laughs, only wheezing slightly on the last few syllables, caught in his throat. He coughs into his jacket sleeve. “Never known him so talkative. In twenty years. Charles this, Charles that. Last time _I_ took him huntin’, the poor rabbit ended up so full of buckshot you’d’ve lost teeth eatin’ it.”

Charles laughs, just a huff of breath, his smile full of fondness. Arthur, who treats the natural world with such quiet fascinated respect, hunting rabbits with a shotgun.

It’d be infuriating - trying to work out how all the mismatched parts of Arthur he gathers and uncovers fit together - if it wasn’t so interesting at the same time. If he wasn’t so completely captivated with figuring out the man. Had been since that ride they’d taken together, hunting from Colter.

“I wasn’t sure he’d want to come,” Charles admits, when Hosea’s cough has died down. Hunting bison was no easy task even for an entire party, and he didn’t want to bore Arthur with tales of his mother’s culture, with why the bison was so important. Perhaps...hadn’t wanted to be disappointed, if Arthur wasn’t interested.

“Oh please,” Hosea scoffs, waving his book in dismissal, points it at Charles as an extension of his arm. “He’d go anywhere with you. My eyesight ain’t as good as it was when I was your age, but even I can see that.”

Charles glances to the side again. Magpie is finally offered the mostly empty cup of coffee, sniffing the dregs with interest and then snorting, loud and revolted, tossing her head away as Arthur laughs.

“Big dumb idiot’s finally found someone who don’t see him as a big dumb idiot. Or...not _just_ a big dumb idiot.”

It’s said with such fondness that Charles can’t help but chuckle some more. Sharpening his knife blade still, Charles thinks again on how Arthur had found him at the party the night before, had looked for him. Left the singing and drinking and warmth and purposefully sought Charles out, stumbling over all his words, and it wasn’t just the drink making him clumsy. How his cheeks were flushed with whiskey and affection both, his sudden smile when Charles had responded positively to his humour, as if he couldn’t quite believe Charles was talking to him at all.

“Sure,” Charles says, setting the whetstone and the knife down on the crate beside him. “I’ll ask him. Thanks, Hosea.”

Hosea hums and opens his book, settling back into his chair with his legs outstretched. He snickers to himself, stifles his tired wheezing into his hand as Charles gets down from the crate, and walks via the chuckwagon on his way to see Arthur.

“You feeding Taima sugar cubes again?” Charles asks when he approaches, unable to help his amusement at how Arthur instinctively grabs his hat as he flinches in surprise, and sets it right again on his head a second later as if nothing had happened. He settles back against the hitching post with deliberate casualness, Magpie’s ears relaxing as she too realises it’s only Charles. Nothing dangerous.

“Dunno what you’re talkin’ about,” Arthur says, voice ragged, lower and thicker than usual. He looks tired, but not as worse for wear as some of the others. John and Javier look like the living dead.

“Sure,” says Charles, smirking from the corner of his mouth. The bowl he’d collected from the chuckwagon is offered to Arthur, who takes it, wrinkling his nose at the sweet smell of honey and molasses. “Johnnycake.”

“It’s _Arthur_ actually.”

“Ha,” Charles says, smiling still despite himself. He ducks under the next hitching post, where Taima is tethered, rubbing her nose on her knee to scratch an itch. She flicks her tail, shifts her weight. Eager to get going.

Arthur’s smiling too when Charles looks back at him, tucking into his breakfast, soaking up honey with fluffy spoonfuls of cake like he hasn’t eaten in a week. “Thanks,” Arthur says, voice attesting to how good the food is. “You make this?”

“Mm. Had a few hours before anyone woke up.”

The honey makes Arthur lick his lips, sucking his spoon. “ _Damn_ , man. Any more hidden talents you not tellin’ me about?”

Charles huffs his amusement, dragging his gaze away from Arthur’s tongue and busying himself with Taima’s tack, fastening her saddle cinch straps on both sides, checking her bridle. “Less fun if I tell you,” he says, glancing at Arthur scraping the sides of his bowl with his fingers, and licking the last of the honey from them as he watches Charles in turn.

The high sun turns the ends of Arthur’s hair bright and blonde, flyaway gold around his ears. His nose is skewed slightly to one side, Charles notices, broken perhaps and badly healed, and he idly wonders if the scattered texture across his cheeks is indeed freckles, and whether he’ll ever be close enough to Arthur to be able to tell.

“You’re an enigma, Mister Smith,” Arthur says, shaking his head, watching Charles finish getting Taima ready. He mops his bowl with his remaining cornbread, wiping his fingers on his jeans before he pats Magpie’s neck. “Gotta admit, didn’t think one drink’d lead to breakfast the next mornin’.”

Charles laughs, loud and genuine. Turning from Taima, he catches the bright giddy smile that dawns on Arthur’s face in response, lopsided and beautiful, like the sun itself is rising in his expression. It hangs between them for a moment, Charles unable to look away, hoping for a second that if he remembers nothing else for the rest of his life, he remembers Arthur’s face, frozen in that crooked smile.

Arthur moves first, tipping his chin down to his chest, shifting his weight. His hand goes to his belt, self-consciously adjusting the buckle, laugh trailing off into the depths of his voice where whatever’s pulling at him rests more easily, quieter, lowering its head. He clears his throat.

“You’re not complaining though,” Charles says, softer, not quite a question but not certain enough to be a statement.

“Nah.” Arthur fiddles with his belt again, glancing at Charles from beneath the brim of his hat. “Not complaining.”

Charles breathes, surprised at how relieved he is. He pats Magpie politely as he passes her, heading past the lean-to again. After a second, Arthur follows behind him.

The whetstone and knife are collected from the crate where Charles had left them, stroking the stone over the blade a few more times as Arthur leaves his empty bowl on the chuckwagon and doubles back, interested in whatever it is Charles is doing. He nods at the knife, thumbs in his belt. “What you preparing for?”

“The greatest of gifts,” Charles says, unironically cryptic.

“An unguarded stagecoach?” Arthur chuckles, smirking out of the corner of his mouth. Charles huffs, amused.

“No, you simple-minded fool,” he says, voice heavy with sarcasm. 

“Steak that’s still kinda pink in the middle?”

“Nope.”

“Hm… New paper, never been drawn on?”

“Not even close. Bison.”

“Bison?”

“Bison.” Charles flips his knife in his hand, sheathes it in his belt, meeting Arthur at eye-level. “From which you can get anything. There’s some over on the plains, I believe. I saw a couple a long way off, before I got back yesterday.”

Picking up one of the rifles propped against the crates for the camp guards, Charles turns from Arthur, setting the gun on his shoulder. He untucks his hair from beneath the strap, and catches Arthur watching him, again from underneath his hat, as if trying not to be noticed. 

“Well, that’s uh… Good luck,” Arthur says, brushing a tuft of grass with the toe of his boot.

He waves absently as Charles moves away, and Charles is _almost_ convinced by how he suddenly seems so interested in the ground, hiding his true feelings beneath that black brim. Sometimes, Charles wants to knock that hat off. Demand Arthur’s eyes. Stare down that bashful anxious fear that curls in Arthur, that drags his gaze down as if he’s unworthy. Undeserving. Show him how it lies to him. Replace it with the truth instead.

“You wanna come with me? I’ll show you how we hunt one.”

The quick joy that flashes on Arthur’s face is almost unnoticeable, but it delights Charles all the same. He takes off his hat so he can brush his hair back from his forehead, then replaces it on his head with a nod. “Sure, why not,” he says, calling a goodbye to Hosea as he hurries after Charles, oblivious to the old man’s quiet laughter.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Taima’s faster, so I’ll keep the herd ringed but scattered so they don’t stampede. See if you can bring one down.”
> 
> “You want a race, you just gotta ask, Mister Smith.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, for the next two chapters, i've tagged for some of the more graphic description - i hope it isn't too gratuitous but just to be safe, i do describe the bison corpses and the butchering process in some detail, plus eventually the killing of the poachers. there's also some canon-typical language, including racial epithets we wouldn't use today, but are often used in game.
> 
> i learnt so much about bison and their decline researching this, it was both fascinating and heartbreaking. i hope this comes across as a slightly more detailed take on the hunting trip than we see in game, but also please know i'm far from an authoritative voice on any of the subjects presented, and it is still intended to be a piece of fanfiction focusing on charles and arthur's developing relationship during the event.

__

_ Shine! shine! shine!   
Pour down your warmth, great Sun!   
While we bask—we two together. _

It’s past noon when they set off. The sun is high, but it isn’t a particularly hot day, perfect for a long ride. Magpie and Taima settle into an easy lope, side by side, confident Taima taking the lead when she has to, the younger Magpie gladly following her tail.

Conversation is little, but neither feels pressure to fill the silence, falling into step together for bouts of trot, steady and certain. The ground is easy underfoot, the bright grass turning short and scrubby as they ride eastwards through New Hanover, crossing into the plains. Dust kicks up around the horses’ hooves, Arthur tilting his hat down against the sun glare, riding with the reins in one hand.

It’s not too far to ride, picking their way across the track towards Twin Stack Pass, avoiding clusters of yucca and pink-flowering prickly pear. Taima is more sure-footed than Magpie, cutting around the foliage and patches of blue grama, the prairie dog mounds and rabbit burrows, only skipping and sidestepping once at distant movement she can’t identify, which Arthur recognises as a rattlesnake escaping through the scrub.

He’s enchanted by the wilderness. Wherever he is. Longs for his journal and his pencils and his knees to sketch on, fascinated by every creature and plant he can see, redcedar and cocklebur, tiny kangaroo rats and snapping massasauga. Even the landscape itself is stunning to that hidden part of Arthur, small and usually voiceless, only indulged on paper. The prairie stretches golden in every direction, pocketed with green brown plants and the occasional tangle of wildflowers blooming in the spring weather, tumbling sandstone bleached in the sun.

Hawks call and wheel above them, vultures circle and pick at bones half-buried in the brush, startling when the horses kick the dust close by. A pronghorn herd watches a rise to the south where a creek once was, long since dried up into nothing but rubble, extending out to the cliff that eventually drops down into Flat Iron Lake.

They head vaguely east, the sun soon straight above them, Arthur listening to Charles talk about his mother and her people, how they’d moved as one with the bison, how valuable and generous the animal was to them, and how sharply their numbers have declined. Arthur doesn’t have much to offer in return, just the occasional comment and joke, wrapped up in every word Charles speaks, cherishing the information shared.

“In many of the Nations’ languages, the bison isn’t distinguished by sex,” Charles says, looking back at Arthur, riding at Taima’s left flank. “It’s simply ‘bison’. But in Lakota, and the Algonquian languages as far as I know, there’s separate terms just for bison bulls and cows. Not for other animals, just for bison. Shows how important they are.”

“Sure,” Arthur agrees, urging Magpie up to Taima’s side again.

They cut off the road and over a small rise, the prairie endless and undulating before them, splintered only by the looming shapes of the refinery in the far distance, set against the deep green blur of Cumberland Forest further still, and the towering rock mesas in the east. The land bumps and dips, and Taima slows as they reach the top of the small hill they’re climbing, Magpie coming to a stop beside her, looking down into a plateau basin below.

“Over there,” Charles says, with the understated smile Arthur has fallen in love with so suddenly, the passion and ferocity in those dark eyes. “See them all? Incredible, aren’t they?”

A herd of bison is clustered loosely below them, beneath the northern peak of the Twin Stacks, dark spots in the afternoon sun. They wander through the grass and sedge, a slow journey of grazing from one point to the next, and incredible is only one of the words Arthur can think of to describe the sight. “They’re beautiful,” he says, and feels entirely inadequate about it.

They watch for a short while, letting the horses stretch their necks and graze on the arid grass as the bison grunt and huff below. One paws the ground and drops to his knees, rolling in the dust and dirt like horses do, and again Arthur longs to start sketching, commit the sight to memory the best way he knows how.

He sighs a laugh to himself and recites, “How beautiful and perfect are the animals. How perfect the earth, and the minutest thing upon it.”

Charles blinks at him. “Was that poetry?”

“Psh…” Arthur readjusts his hat, absently scratching at Magpie’s withers, wondering why he’d spoken at all. “Yeah. It is. I...read it in a book. This old guy’s poems. Real flowery.”

“Huh.”

“It ain’t true. Earth ain’t perfect.”

“Maybe...that’s what he meant.”

“Maybe,” Arthur agrees, feeling his face flare up in embarrassment. How many times was he going to make an ass of himself in front of Charles? 

“You’re an enigma, Mister Morgan,” Charles says, undeniably fond, and smiles at Arthur’s wry laugh, self-deprecating as ever. It breaks through Arthur’s tension, keeps him from getting lost inside his own head with that soft smile to keep him afloat. 

“So...we should only kill one. It’ll be plenty to haul back to camp without a pack horse. Bulls can get to 2000lbs.”

Arthur nods, concentrating now. He watches the lumbering creatures before them, taking the opportunity to stretch out his ankles from his stirrups, listening as Charles continues, “It’s early, but the herds will start coming together this time of year, ready for mating in summer, so there might be some real angry bulls down there. Be _careful_. They’ll run faster than a train and hit just as hard.”

“I’m always careful. You gonna take point?”

“Thought I’d leave the honours to you, cowboy.”

Arthur chuckles and says, “If you’re sure?”, unfastening his rifle from Magpie’s saddle scabbard, checking the sight before slinging it over his head and shoulder.

“Taima’s faster, so I’ll keep the herd ringed but scattered so they don’t stampede. See if you can bring one down.”

“You want a race, you just gotta ask, Mister Smith.” There’s a smirk pulling at Arthur’s lips when Charles looks at him, and he can’t help returning it himself, intoxicated by the creases around Arthur’s eyes, the challenge behind them.

“She’s faster.”

“You ain’t seen Mags run.”

“I seen you ride.”

Arthur’s eyebrows hit the underside of his hat in mock offence. It makes Charles laugh again, the dramatic affront on Arthur’s face, the easy teasing between them, like they’ve been friends for years. “Now that, sir, is rude,” Arthur says. “I’m wounded.”

“You’re stalling.”

“I ain’t stalling.”

“You are. Right now. Taima’s faster.”

“Fine, you think that. But I ain’t the one too yeller to race.”

The look Charles gives him makes Arthur laugh too, raised eyebrows and pursed lips, though he can see the humour tugging at the corners, threatening to split into a smile. Both of them collect their reins at the same time, sharing the same thought, and wait, horses flicking their ears, shifting their weight. Breathing together.

“Git!”

“Yah!”

Taima jolts forward first, more responsive than once-wild Magpie. She kicks into canter on the tricky downward slope, and Magpie hurries to catch up with her friend, only jogging unbalanced for a second before she’s charging too, hoofbeats thundering through the sedge.

Shoulders back, hips down. The mares gallop wild across the prairie, dust and grass thrown up in front and behind, closing on the bison herd with every step. Magpie nickers, calling to Taima as she catches her and steps in front, reins flicked near her flank, encouraging. Faster, step further. _More_.

Arthur cheers, “Yeeeee-hah!”

Charles is grinning, breathless, barely remembering to breathe, his hair streaming behind him, laughing at Arthur’s hollering as they ride abreast together, Magpie’s shoulders just a half-length in the lead. He urges Taima faster with his legs, her breath snorting, feeling every hammered hoofbeat in his core just as Arthur does the same, tearing at the plains, crossing the wide basin in seconds that could well be hours, time running together like the cars of a derailed train.

The bison start to bellow, roaring warnings to the rest of the herd. “Yah!” Arthur yells, and Charles shouts just to his side. Magpie skips suddenly, cuts around a prickly pear, loses a stride, and Taima’s on her shoulder, Arthur distracted for just a second by the careening grin on Charles’ face, wild and brilliant. He laughs, heart in his mouth, voice barely there above the stampede of hooves. 

Nothing else matters but that smile. Just Charles. Exhilarating, reckless abandon. Heart pounding. And _Charles_. The open plains and the sky and the horses and _Charles_.

Closer, faster. The bison start to run.

Arthur hasn’t ever felt so alive in his life.

A few lengths out and Charles starts to peel away. Taima circles down and around the herd, and the bison scatter loosely in the opposite direction, braying and kicking as they bolt towards the slope to the north. Arthur sits heavier, runs Magpie parallel to the group, taking the weight of her bit with the barrel of his rifle, legs and seat his only anchor.

Charles is chasing the bison through the basin, Taima worrying their outside so they don’t turn away from Arthur, fenced in between Charles’ shouts and Arthur’s sights.

A slow deep breath, and Arthur focuses, picks his target, hips free in the saddle. Empties his lungs. Steady.

He squeezes. Shoots.

Breathes.

The young bull stumbles, succumbs before he falls.

Arthur resurfaces, the world crashing back around him at full speed. Colour fires behind his eyes with every gulp of air, the green grass, the golden brush, bright and tingling with adrenaline as he lets his body slow. He takes up his reins and sits deep, Magpie snorting every breath beneath him, the dust drifting and settling around the downed bison, sandy brown against his dark crown of fur.

Magpie circles him as Taima guards them, galloping on to the north, driving the herd up and over the rise, where the plains slope up and spill to another plateau, out of sight from the lower ground. They run and keep running, and Arthur has Magpie slowed to a panting, sweating stop before Charles turns Taima back to join him, letting her jog steadily across the scrub.

“Clean,” Charles says, letting the admiration show in his voice. He dismounts, inspects the bison beside Arthur, and claps his hand to Arthur’s shoulder. “Well done.”

There’s no hesitation in the praise or the touch, and Arthur finds himself staring sidelong at Charles’ face, at the slight flush in his cheeks from the exertion, the windblown mane of his hair. Strands are lying out of place, messy across his cheekbones and fallen chaotic around his shoulders, and Arthur almost can’t resist the urge to dig his fingers into the tangle and brush it out himself. Take each piece one by one and stroke it through. Or else, pull Charles in, nails on his scalp, tighten his hold in his hair until Charles _bites_ -

“Fuck,” Arthur says. “Uh. I, uh...” Eloquent. He breathes. “Hah. Thanks.”

He clears his throat, his smile sliding quickly from his face, guilty. “He’s amazin’,” he says, crouching by the bull’s massive head, hiding the heat in his cheeks as he rests his hand on the bison’s thick thatch of fur. It’s matted with mud in places, but still soft underneath his palm.

“Beautiful,” Charles says absently, looking at Arthur before eventually crouching too.

The bull isn’t the largest, about 1500lbs, but still six feet from hoof to crown, perhaps one of the younger less dominant males hoping for a chance to breed, Charles ponders - “Cut him off in his prime,” Arthur says wryly. It takes the both of them to move him, a formidable weight to shift even then, and more to eventually split his skin, Charles hefting his hatchet into the bull’s breastbone, deftly leading Arthur through the process step by step.

It’s physical and visceral, hard on both the body and the mind, despite Arthur not exactly being new to blood and gore. There’s something intimate about it, stripping such a mighty animal of skin and bone and flesh, both of them silent save for Charles’ instructions or explanations, always said simply and short. Organs are emptied to cool them quickly. Meat is cut in slabs, following muscles and tissue as closely as possible to preserve the arteries, keep blood in the flesh, his bones kept for marrow, hide peeled back and cut like the pieces of a sewing pattern.

It’s a grisly, graphic ritual, paying tribute to the life of the bison in its macabre attention to detail, to his generosity in death, Charles doing his best to teach Arthur the myriad ways his sacrifice will be honoured, how his body will be used and benefit all of them. Bones for tools and handles, crushed for their marrow, buckskin for clothes and bedding, bags, blankets, tent liners. Hair for stuffing, ropes and halters, rawhide saddle blankets, lariats, straps, containers. Paunch, horns, teeth, tail. Organs made into sacks and pouches, sinew into sewing thread, brain matter to tan his hide.

It’s overwhelming. Intimidating, if not for Charles’ quiet expertise, reassuring Arthur without words. A dizzying, gruesome, fascinating study. Like nothing he’s ever seen.

Still, it leaves his nerves frayed and raw, adrenaline jangling in every inch of him, keeping his mind mostly blank for several hot bloody hours as they work beneath the sun, lost in a pile of innards, racks of ribs, brisket, croup, skin and muscle. Blood covers them both up to their elbows, and there are two partial handprints on Arthur’s thighs from where he’d leant his hands before realising his jeans were now smeared red. 

By the time they finish, it’s late afternoon, the sparse shadows cast by rocks and plants growing longer across the scrub, sun starting to roll to the west, and both of them are drained, in more ways than just physical. Sweat darkens Arthur’s shirt, clings to his hair, and he mops his face on his own shoulder, almost too tired to care about what a sight he must be.

Finally satisfied, Charles fetches his canteen as Arthur carefully loads the horses with a secured bundle each of skin and hide, emptied organs, meat and fat, parcelled as well as possible for the ride back. He fastens Magpie’s load safely to the cantle of her saddle, before heading back over to the stripped corpse of the bison, letting her graze a moment longer.

It’s like he feels a need to say something. Why it’s different to the countless other times he’s skinned an animal he’s hunted, Arthur doesn’t know, but the sheer effort exhausted in butchering the bison is something he can’t help but feel like he needs to address. Respect.

Maybe Dutch is right. Maybe he really is going soft.

Charles joins him quietly, arms streaming with water, dripping pink from his fingertips as he offers the canteen to Arthur so he can wash too. His attention is drawn to the south for a moment, watching something far off as Arthur scrubs the blood from his forearms, picking it out from under his nails, between his fingers, and then he looks back, features soft.

“You good?”

Arthur looks at him, then back to the bison. Charles has tied his hair with a band, but strands still hang loose around his face, caught by the occasional breeze. He is tired too, shirt damp with sweat and the odd blood stain, yet Arthur is sure he looks infinitely more put together than he himself does, dark skin showing little sun flush, expression stoic but never cold. Always so handsome. Always precisely measured, in words and appearance, whereas Arthur feels unkempt and clumsy. Messy. Unsteady on his feet like a newborn colt.

“Yeah,” he says, and he is. He has to be. “Just- I...I don’t know. It’s nothing. Stupid.”

“You ain’t stupid, Arthur. Neither’s feeling.”

“Yeah.”

Arthur sighs, and Charles rests a hand on his shoulder again, just for a few moments. It helps. Whatever it helps with, Arthur can’t identify, but it helps all the same.

“Rest easy, feller,” Arthur says. He touches the brim of his hat, and then together they walk back across the grass to where the horses are grazing, leaving the bull’s remains to the sun, the carrion birds, the foxes and coyotes, and the earth from which he came.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A glance at Charles. He shifts his weight. His right hand is hovering by his holster, precarious.
> 
> “What business is it of yours what we-”
> 
> The first man’s head explodes.

_ _

_ Two together!   
Winds blow South, or winds blow North,   
Day come white, or night come black,   
Home, or rivers and mountains from home,   
Singing all time, minding no time,   
While we two keep together. _

“Hey, I wanna check something, do you mind?”

“Sure.”

Charles presses Taima on, attention caught by something over to the south east. The horses jog together in a loose pair, steady across the grassland basin as the sun lazily rolls lower behind them, clear skies promising a warm and pleasant evening. 

“Where we going?”

There’s a slight frown on Charles’ face as Arthur draws alongside Taima and is able to look at him sidelong, just a tiny crease between his eyebrows, a hardness in the set of his jaw. It reminds him of their ride together from Colter, Charles’ voice indignant and impatient - “Come along,” - how he’d snapped at Arthur, had no time for Arthur’s posturing, no sympathy for his reluctance to again head out into the snow. Arthur had been captivated at first growl.

This frown is similar, yet… It isn’t just annoyance pulling at Charles.

“I saw some scavenger birds over there,” Charles says, gaze fixed further off still. Whatever he’s thinking, Arthur can’t decipher. “Just...wanted to see what attracted them.”

They ride through the prairie as before, keeping a slower pace south east, continuing on towards the Twin Stacks. The ground is rougher there, steeper, pockmarked with cacti and clusters of dark tangled thistle, rock and rubble skidding down the scrubby hills and kicking up dust, startling the prairie chickens as they scratch for food.

Sedge and buffalograss grow thicker too, the land rippling down to the road below them and beyond, arrhythmic and irregular, scarred with bare patches where grass doesn’t grow, and all bunched beneath the rock formations, north and south, as though the earth itself was grabbed and pulled taut into the sky, then left to tumble down in uneven heaps around the mesas, sloping pews beneath two rugged cathedral spires. They surge grey and pale against the yellow green below, the darker clumps of grasses and yucca, the dirt burrows dug by rabbits, two colossal monuments to the ancient earth that helped them form.

Arthur has to hold his hat to stop it falling off as he stares up at the Stacks as they draw near, just able to detail the misshapen architecture of stone and sediment, the hardy tufts of foliage growing from whatever crevice they can. Amazing, really. An eagle leaps from a low terrace at the sight of them approaching, and glides on open wings toward the south, Arthur following its flight for as long as he can.

As they close on the northern stack, weaving past prickly pears and prairie dog mounds, the birds Charles had spotted earlier startle and take flight, vultures and squawking ravens, and finally Arthur can see the cause for his concern. 

Three dark corpses are piled together on a shallow rocky plateau, just shrouded in the late shadow of the towering cliff above.

They’ve been picked half to pieces.

“ _No_ ,” Charles hisses, and Arthur frowns as they draw nearer, the full extent of the scene becoming clear. Three great bison, rank and rotting. There are craters where their hide once was, flesh collapsed into itself with the weight of decay and gutted further by scavengers, innards strewn through the scrub in thick wet strings. White ribs stand bare and stripped in all three corpses, a grisly mockery of the rock formations above them, that loom bleached and barren like the forgotten bones of a great leviathan, spine half-swallowed by the earth.

“Shot and left for dead, looks like.”

Magpie shies from the bodies with a warning burr, dancing in place before Arthur gently rubs her withers, wincing as the smell hits him on the breeze. It’s sick, and he can barely find his voice to comment at all, lost somewhere in his throat, in the pits and welts on the bisons’ corpses, the tattered skin and abused flesh, ripe and writhing with insects, black with old blood. Two of the bodies have little skull left, great chunks carved from their crowned heads and peppered with buckshot scars, eyes plucked and burst, like- Almost as if-

They were hunted with shotguns.

“ _Why_ … Why would someone do this?”

It’s a flimsy, rhetorical question, but Arthur can’t think of much else to say, reminded so violently of the bison bull across the plains, how reverent Charles was, how carefully he had instructed Arthur in its butchering, the visceral intimacy of it. There were uses for his body that Arthur would never have imagined; no part of his sacrifice would go to waste.

They had taken his life, but it was at least done with as much respect as they could pay, if that was any consolation at all. To see three, left to rot in the brush, three that could have fed and housed and clothed dozens, three denied a peaceful painless end and cornered between the rocks too steep to climb and the barrel of a _shotgun_ -

It’s _sick_.

“There are tracks,” Charles says, a little way from Arthur, attention on the ground. Taima sidesteps and snorts, Charles gently stroking her neck, the sharp edges in his words a direct contrast to how carefully he calms her down. “Heading in this direction.”

“Lead the way,” Arthur says, voice hard, meeting Charles’ eyes for just a second before they turn and ride together, singular and silent.

They ride abreast down towards the road, the horses settling back into the familiarity of a steady slow lope, happy to be given a task to focus on, despite the weight of the loads on their backs. Again, Taima takes the lead where she needs to, well balanced on the downhill slopes and uneven outcrops, unfazed by loose ground under her hooves, shifting rock and sharp grasses.

“No animal commits a cruelty like that,” Arthur says, low in his voice. Charles glances at him from the side as they follow the road between the Stacks, a mighty gateway to another endless prairie, stretching out across the Heartlands.

“No,” he agrees, “They were shot.” Lips pressed together, Charles continues searching the ground for tracks, for two horses that had followed the road on the northern side, just off the main trail. He’s quiet for some time, and Arthur doesn’t expect him to speak again, almost surprised by how much Charles continues to share with him, how much feeling there is in every word. “I just- I don’t know why anyone would...leave them there to rot like that.”

Arthur hums. They follow the road for a while, and Arthur is not yet a good enough tracker to help Charles pick the hoofprints from the dust, see them past the muddled traffic of deer and pronghorn, the cast-off dirt from travelling wagons. So he stays quiet, responsive to every change in gait from Taima in front of him, every moment Charles pauses and re-establishes the barely noticeable trail.

He frowns when he concentrates, Arthur notices. Dark eyes narrow, and he worries his bottom lip with his teeth, pushes escaped strands of hair back off his face. A wrinkle deepens across the wide bridge of his nose. Arthur earnestly wants to draw him, and yet is sure he’d never be able to do Charles’ face justice with just pencil and paper and his unsteady hands, taught by nothing but repetition.

Perhaps. Another time. When Charles’ expression is unburdened by that grisly, bloody sight of the rotting bison, and the apprehension of whatever they’ll find at the end of the trail.

Arthur shakes his head to himself, and Charles’ voice again captures his attention.

“Look, there’s another,” Charles says, grave and wary. “On that hill to the right.” He kicks Taima on, and she bounds across the road, hurrying up and over a small crest in the land to a point Arthur couldn’t see from below. Shows what a useless tracker he’d be, he thinks, urging Magpie to follow and catch up.

The fourth bison is a sad echo of the first group. She is smaller, not as dark in her fur, with only one horn still intact on her great head, the other swallowed by another catastrophic shotgun blast having torn out half her skull, the meat and viscera greying in the fetid air.

“Goddammit,” Arthur says, face twisted with disgust and anger both, again having to calm Magpie as they inspect the corpse. Insects have already set in the bison’s flesh, but the decay isn’t as advanced as before, her hide still mostly intact across her ribs and flanks, the smell not quite as nauseating. It’s tattered, like a dirty tablecloth, the fabric of her skin barely clinging to her bones. Vultures circle high above them, watching.

“Shot and left for dead again,” Charles says, “But this one looks…fresher.”

Arthur hums again, pulling his gaze away from the corpse and to the edge of the outcrop, overlooking the road below. Objects litter the ground there, and Arthur jogs Magpie over to see better, recognising the mess as the remnants of a small campsite. He calls back to Charles, “There’s a camp here,” and dismounts, looping Magpie’s reins over the horn of her saddle. “I’m gonna take a look.”

The camp is modest, perhaps one or two people, but the amount of litter suggests whoever they were left in a hurry, or maybe just didn’t care to clean up. Some blankets and tarpaulins lie forgotten, protection from the cold stone underfoot, and there’s an empty wooden crate on its side, piled with some unused kindling, dry brush for tinder. Arthur prods some empty cans with his boot as he passes, crouches by the fire.

A ring of stones circle the ashes, and Arthur touches one with the back of his fingers. Warm, just slightly. The remaining logs too are not yet cold, though he can’t see any smouldering embers. Lucky. An errant spark here would engulf the spring plains.

He remounts Magpie, crosses to where Charles is again searching the ground for tracks, leaning low in his saddle as Taima paws the dirt. “Logs ain’t gone cold,” Arthur says, meeting the cold displeasure on Charles’ face. His jaw is clenched; the muscle beneath his cheekbone tense and pulsing. “Maybe half a day since they left.”

“Mm. Bison’s been dead the same time.”

“Tracks?”

“Can’t tell,” Charles says, frustrated.

The sun is lower now, stretching the shadows like pulling taffy. Colours seem warmer in the evening, a golden preview of the summer to come, savanna and endless sky, Flat Iron Lake like glass on the distant horizon, where the miles of grassland fall away. Steep bluffs there drop into greener grass and blackjack oaks, the railroad track perched along the terraces.

Charles suggests they get up higher, and Arthur follows him further up the rise from the outcrop camp, tracing the curves and lines of the land. Several whitetail does watch from further on, and spook as the horses jog nearer, disappearing over the hill. “This way,” Charles says, Taima picking her way after the deer. “We should have a good view from up here.”

They emerge from the climb on a grassy flat, and the road is barely identifiable far below them. Cornwall’s eyesore of an oil refinery is black and ugly in the distance to the north, juxtaposed against the lush labyrinth of Cumberland Forest, rolling to meet the sky further than Arthur’s eyes can see. It’s a pretty enough picture, but neither of them are paying much attention.

“See anything?”

“I dunno…” Arthur stands in his stirrups, scans the landscape. “Smoke to the east.” He sits, points, tries to catch Charles’ eyes. “Could be a camp?”

Taima kicks off without a word from Charles, and Arthur scrambles to catch up, Magpie’s hooves slipping in the dirt before she finds her feet. They ride along the ridge, one after another, focused on the faint smoke trail on the horizon, a black beacon against the sky.

“Bastards,” Charles says, and he’s so far in front of Magpie that Arthur barely hears him, isn’t entirely sure it’s meant for him at all. His voice is alien, hissed like a Cottonmouth snake, tension shaking the words’ foundations. It’s not an emotion he’s seen in Charles before, usually so sober and serene, and even when he’d been annoyed with Arthur back in Colter, it was always controlled. Clipped. 

This is _rage_. A wildfire on the dry prairie.

“Just killing for fun,” Charles adds, as Arthur finally draws alongside Taima, trying again to meet Charles’ gaze. “Bastards!”

Wry humour bubbles in Arthur before he can truly think about whether it’s appropriate to attempt a joke, an instinctive defence mechanism against the stress of difficult situations. A failsafe, usually.

He huffs an empty chuckle, “You think we can talk?”

It’s the wrong thing to say.

Charles glances at him sidelong, and the ferocity in his expression is like a branding iron, white hot and terrible. “I don’t kill for _fun_ ,” he snaps, and his lips curl when he says it, words wet with venom. He’s a wolf baring his teeth, eyes locked on the pulsing jugular vein. “I kill when I need to.”

Arthur shrinks. Scrambles. He hadn’t- He wasn’t- It’s not-

Sitting heavier, Magpie slows underneath him, dropping back behind Taima. Can he truly argue that point? Charles is a good man, a much much better man than Arthur could ever hope to be, and compared to him, does Arthur have any morality at all? Any code he follows? Lines he doesn’t cross?

Perhaps once. When it had been new to take a life, a sick thrill he hadn’t yet grown accustomed to, had still viewed with horror. Had still woken in the night, wrestling with the memory of it, fitfully trying to wipe the blood from his hands.

_“We kill those as need killing,”_ Dutch had said, beacon bright messiah, his sermon on the dirt mound. _“We kill to survive.”_

But Arthur hadn’t believed that particular colourful lie for a long time.

Across the road again, and Arthur’s contempt for his own big mouth, his entire blighted existence, settles angrily in his gut, lighting the fuse of an already frayed temper. Self-hatred comes so easily to him, and the fact it’s so well deserved just heightens the guilt, spiralling together until his trigger fingers itch, and his bottom lip is torn from his teeth.

“More bison,” Charles voice says from further in front. “It has to be them! Come on.”

Taima takes off, and Arthur spurs on Magpie with an unconvincing “Wait up!”, running between another two corpses. Glancing as they charge past, Arthur notes the bright red blood, still sticky in the sunlight, the lack of dust on their hides, the only obvious signs of injury the starburst shotgun blasts torn through their pink flesh.

Barely an hour dead.

“Bastards,” Arthur huffs, kicking Magpie further on. Grasses brush her hocks, and she grunts with exertion as they start to climb again, looping below a sharp overhang in the rock above and skidding sharply around, Taima already coming to a snorting stop further on, tossing the foam from her mouth as she throws her head.

There’s another camp tucked against the steppe of rock that makes up the overhang, where the land levels out from the steep bluff below. A small bald patch of rock, sheltered by the wall behind it, with a wonderful view of the Heartlands to the north, and the mountains far beyond, a modest campsite has been set up.

“Did you fools shoot those bison?”

Arthur hurries to catch up after dismounting, subconsciously making sure his revolver is in its holster at his right hip, his sawn-off at his left. Low and threatening, Charles’ voice is like nothing he’s ever heard, and every alarm bell Arthur has is ringing in his head at once.

“What’s your problem?” says one of the campers, indignant, seated around their fire, legs crossed in front of his chest. He’s a broad man, some kind of pelt draped around his shoulders as a cloak, dirty brown mutton chops beneath the brim of a hat. His companion is just as forgettable. Slighter, a longer beard, simply dressed.

The same detritus litters the campsite as had the previous one, bowls and utensils for cooking, canned food, ammunition boxes, a washbasin and rags. Two lean-to shelters have been constructed, and simple bedrolls are spread inside with blankets and other hides for warmth, a haversack, a rolled tarpaulin in case of rain.

It’s fairly standard, except for the nature of their trip into the Heartlands, the festering corpses left in their wake.

“I said,” Charles says, and Arthur can see the growl in his voice as well as hear it, see his flared nostrils and the clenched muscle in his jaw. “Did you _fools_. Shoot those bison?”

Arthur takes a steadying breath. He’s close enough to Charles to _feel_ his anger, like static in the air, like the crackling heat before a thunderstorm. His eyes move from one of the poachers to the other, unblinking, a silent presence just behind Charles. The muscle, perhaps, except Charles has plenty of that for himself. Arthur is hardly needed as an enforcer, which is so often the role he plays - big, dumb, intimidating - but he seems to fall into that role anyway, if more to support his friend than play the part himself.

The second camper gets to his feet. “Calm down, you black or red bastard, whatever the fuck you are-”

Arthur draws his revolver, cocks it by his side. His lip twitches.

“Did you _shoot them_?” Charles yells, demands, voice barely staying level. Teetering on a knife edge.

“Yeah! We did!” the first man says, throwing his hands up. He stands too as he speaks, and takes a step towards the fire, Arthur moving closer to Charles in response, thumb worrying the hammer of his revolver. The second man eyes him, flitting from Arthur to Charles and back. “We shot them bison and we’ll shoot you too if you don’t get!” 

A glance at Charles. He shifts his weight. His right hand is hovering by his holster, precarious. 

“What business is it of yours what we-”

The first man’s head explodes.

“It’s that business of mine!” Charles roars, shotgun held in one hand.

_Fuck_.

Blood and bone spray outwards in both directions. Spatter hits the lean-to, the rock wall behind, and covers Charles too, a dizzy splatter of viscera painted across his face, red contrasting with the white snarl of his teeth, the dark of his skin.

Arthur stares at him. The second man drops and scrambles backwards in his periphery, babbling in fear, “Fuck- Good God, you’re crazy!”, his boots sliding on the dirt and rock, but Arthur still can’t tear his eyes away from the fury on Charles’ face, his heaving breath, the mist of blood dripping slick from his hands.

“Look- I-I got a family! A family! Don’t shoot me!”

Heartbeat deafening, Arthur starts forward on unsteady legs. He falls on the poacher, pins him as he thrashes and fights, begging again for his life, for his family’s sake. Panting, and still half focused on Charles’ presence behind him, Arthur squeezes the man’s throat, finding his pulse with his thumb. It’s rabbit fast, Arthur keeping the floundering man still with just one hand.

“Why?” Arthur growls, voice overwrought, pulled taut deep in his chest. The smell of the rotting bison lingers in his memory, their magnificent heads smashed open in the grass like broken porcelain. Charles’ anguish too, twisting his face into a mockery of his usual calm beauty, stirring a pain in him that Arthur can only try to understand, and knows he never truly will. “Why kill the bison,” he snaps. “Why leave them to rot?”

“I-I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about!”

Growling his anger, Arthur punches the man across the face, hard enough to hurt his own knuckles. It snaps the poacher’s head back, and Arthur yells at him again, spit hitting the man’s skin. “Goddamnit, tell us or you’re dead!”

He shakes him by the throat, like a dog held by the scruff of its neck, and brings his elbow crunching down on the poacher’s nose, his whimper bubbling like the thick blood from his nostrils, spraying blood up Arthur’s rolled sleeve. The sound is wet, vile, Arthur breathing hard through his clenched teeth.

“O-Okay! Okay…” Tears have welled in the poacher’s eyes, his voice strained beneath Arthur’s hand. He kicks his heels weakly against the ground, writhing, and Arthur leans one knee heavily on one of his thighs to stop him moving, pinning him beneath his weight.

The strange intimacy of it isn’t lost on Arthur, despite the anger crackling from every part of him. His gut is roiling, conflicted, the slick slip of the bison’s entrails in his hands, the scent of decay on the plains, the sight of Charles spattered with blood and shaking with fury, the muscles in his arm jumping with the force of the one-handed shotgun blast.

Charles’ hair, Charles’ profile, the gentle skill in how he moves his hands, his wild grin as they raced across the basin, his bright unabashed laugh. The teasing in his voice as they’d flirted the night before. The ferocity as he executed the poacher. 

And fuck, why does that curl so hot and heavy in his insides. A confusing tangle of admiration and adrenaline and arousal, creeping at the base of his spine, only made worse by his position straddling the whimpering poacher, whose legs flail uselessly between Arthur’s thighs.

“We was just paid to kill as many as we could,” the man slurs, words rushing together in his fear. “M-Make it look like Indians!”

“ _Why_?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know, I swear- We didn’t ask! P-Please!”

Arthur punches him. Blood crunches wetly from his nose, and the man sobs. “Then _who_? Who hired you?”

“Just kill him,” Charles’s voice says from somewhere behind, dark and furious, voice trembling like a rattlesnake.

“Who _hired you_?” Arthur yells.

“I don’t know! I-I didn’t-” Tears and blood and mucus drip together around the poacher’s mouth, spattering as he tries to speak, his breath still squeezed tight in Arthur’s hand.

“There was sixty million bison, before white men came here, ya know that?” Arthur says, barely restraining his own anger, digging his thumb into the racing pulse he’s holding, choking. “Sixty _million_. Now?” He huffs a humourless laugh, taking sick pleasure in how the poacher wails. Cowers. “Less than a _thousand_.”

“You get that? It’s just more genocide!” Another punch. The man gurgles, heaves some air. “Killing the bison is just another way of us killin’ the Indians, and you an’ your headless friend don’t even _bother_ to get the name of the fuckin’ murdering shitstain that hired you?!”

Arthur closes his bruised fingers in the poacher’s hair, drops his neck and smashes his head down into the ground below, brown strands caught between his cut knuckles. The sound it makes is brutal, and the man cries desperately in pain, trying hopelessly to pull away.

“P-Please,” he says, gasping, eyes barely open, cheek swelling purple. “I-It was...it was s-some- Some army feller. The fort! Fort Wallace!”

“Army,” Arthur snarls. “God fucking damnit.” He lets the man’s head crash to the ground, and the poacher scrambles back as soon as he’s released, kicking weakly out of Arthur’s hold, hands scrabbling at the loose rock.

“P-Please,” he cries again, clumsily trying to find his feet and stand, cornered by the rock wall behind him, blind and bleeding. Arthur flexes his cramping fingers, glaring with as much menace as he can, straightening up to stand. “I told you everythin’, please, G-God, please. I-I got a family-”

“Then quit bleating an’ go. Run away.”

“Arthur,” Charles says, vicious. But the poacher isn’t finished. He clambers slowly upright, unsteady as he reaches backwards, leaning on the rock for balance, and spits a wad of blood at Arthur’s feet.

“Run _away_ ,” Arthur spits back.

“You’re a fuckin’... Crazy.” His voice is trembling, wild reckless panic in his eyes, hand hovering in the space about his hip. Above his gun. “C-Crazy Indian-loving bastard, and a…fucking- Fucking redskin ni-”

The man’s head cracks backwards into the rock, a single gunshot through his forehead. 

Arthur lowers his revolver with a shivering sigh, watching the poacher’s body crumple limply against the rock wall, blood oozing slowly down his face from the one shot, bright red like a blooming rose. His eyes are wide and terrified, fingers just inches from his weapon, frozen there. Staring.

Holstering his revolver, Arthur tries to exhale some of his tension, ground himself back in the present. Takes in the waning sunlight, the smell of gunpowder, the cool evening air, and then suddenly, a hand on his shoulder, heavy and warm.

Arthur flinches as he turns, and Charles instinctively curls his hand back before Arthur automatically protests, mumbles, “No- I’m alright, it’s fine, don’t-” He breathes, hand caught halfway between his side and grabbing Charles’ retreating wrist, desperate for it to stay. “Please. Just surprised me, is all.” 

The hand settles again, hesitant, and Arthur turns his back on the dead poacher to face Charles properly, standing not even a full arm’s length from him, much closer than either of them were really expecting.

They look at each other. Neither pulls away.

Blood is still splattered across Charles’ left side, a fine pink mist soaked into his shirt. It’s mostly wiped from his hands and his face but still clinging in the creases, dried stubbornly in his stubble. He’s close enough that Arthur can clearly see the white scars on both sides of his jaw, more extensive on the right, spider-like, like repaired cracks in broken china, healed but still visible. Highlighted, instead of hidden.

They’re beautiful. Like topography, mapping the years of Charles’ life on his face. Gold thread running through a great tapestry. The break in his right eyebrow is noticeable too, the deep furrow between his brows from too many frowns, creases underneath his eyes. His eyelashes are long, framing eyes of gorgeous brown, the same rich colour as the crown of fur between the bison’s horns.

Both of them are breathing heavily, buzzing with the frantic rush of what they’ve done, and Arthur can’t help but stare at him as Charles squeezes his shoulder, nostrils flaring with the weight of his breath. Can’t find the energy to move away, avert his eyes. His thumb rolls gently over the curve of Arthur’s collarbone, presses at the soft skin where his clavicle ends, but whether it’s deliberate or not, Arthur can’t tell, caught by Charles’ eyes, his unreadable expression, just as lost in Arthur’s face as Arthur is in his.

“You good?” Arthur asks, quiet, gaze flicking down to Charles’ lips, and then his throat when he swallows, Adam’s apple jumping.

“Yeah.” Voice breathy, Charles seems transfixed by Arthur’s eyes, only slipping down to Arthur’s mouth when Arthur wets his lips with the tip of his tongue. “You?” His eyes linger, hand sliding from Arthur’s shoulder, brushing against the bare skin of his forearm before it finally falls.

Arousal spikes in Arthur again, dark and heady. There’s barely a foot between them; it’d be easy to close the distance, tangle his fingers in Charles’ hair, let it fall from his ponytail. Crash together, pull him in. Adrenaline still pulses in every inch of him. He could bury it in Charles’ calm ferocity, drown out the sound of the poacher’s nose breaking with Charles’ laboured breathing and rich voice, give himself completely and let Charles take as much as he wants. Needs. Anything. Take from his hands and his mouth and his flesh, replacing the feeling of the poacher struggling underneath him with the firm warmth of Charles’ thighs, his chest, the muscle that’s so visible even covered by his clothes. Biceps that swallowed a shotgun blast.

“Yeah,” Arthur says, unconvincing, voice no more than a rumble. “I’m good.” His eyes dart back to Charles’ own.

“Good.” It’s a growl again, but lacking any anger, Charles’ voice low with something else entirely.

He moves just slightly, barely noticeable, shifting his weight forward onto the balls of his feet, and then there’s even less distance, Arthur still breathing heavily, Charles eyes half-lidded as he traces the lines of Arthur’s lips. Tilts his head as he studies the scar there.

It’d be easy.

A raven squawks.

Arthur flinches, looks away, just as Charles turns slightly to find the source of the sound. The languid tension shatters, and the gap between them is suddenly huge, Charles stepping back, anxiously dragging his hand through the strands of hair that have fallen out of their band, pushing them off his face, Arthur scuffing the dusty ground with his boots as he moves, scattering pebbles down the hill.

“Good,” Charles says again, absent, putting more distance between them as he mechanically heads back to the campfire, kicking dust and dirt over the smouldering logs. Arthur stands awkwardly for a few moments, adjusting his hat, rubbing the back of his neck, shifting his belt to a slightly different position. Suddenly cold. 

The raven is perched on one of the lean-to shelters, eager to pick at the camp and the corpses, impatient with their presence. It shrieks again, and Charles shoos it away, Arthur willing himself to start moving, pull himself back from wherever his mind had wandered. Some indulgent, secret place. Dangerous. Intoxicating.

They start to strip the camp, wordless, avoiding each other’s eyes for as long as they can both bear it, which isn’t more than a few minutes. The fire is put out, the poachers’ horses untied and let loose. Arthur makes sure both are calm and petted before he leaves them to wherever they want to wander, collecting a can of hoof oil he can make use of, plus a packet of cigarettes from one of the saddlebags.

“Sure you’re okay?” he asks, joining Charles in loosely searching the rest of the camp for anything useful, and light enough to carry. They each pick up some cans of food, some ammunition, a few blankets Miss Grimshaw can use, a bottle of rum for Pearson.

Charles looks at him, prodding a wooden crate with his boot. “It’s what they deserved.” It’s empty, and he moves on.

Arthur finds a few bills, and some documents in a lockbox, tucking them into his satchel to study later. Maybe there’ll be something to explain this whole mess.

“I agree,” Arthur says, straightening up, gingerly inspecting the bruising on his knuckles. They’ll be sore for a while. Serves him right. “But that ain’t what I asked.”

Charles doesn’t answer him.

The horses are still a little way down the hill, far enough from the camp to be unbothered by the commotion, yet still close enough to hurry over when they’re called. They’re content to graze on the sparse grass, recovering some energy for the long ride back to Horseshoe, still carrying the heavy hide parcels on their backs.

Charles gently rubs Taima’s nose as she wanders close, and the Appaloosa burrs when she sees Arthur walking over too, recognising him as her most reliable source of treats. “Ha,” Charles huffs, packing the collected supplies into Taima’s saddlebags, making sure she’s comfortable. “Knew it was you kept feeding her sugar.”

Arthur chuckles, “I’m weak for pretty faces,” relieved by the tiny movement of Charles’ lips, pulled by humour, how he glances up when Arthur smirks. More like normal. Magpie too is loaded with a few more supplies, loosely checked over, her saddle straps refastened.

Charles still hasn’t answered the question by the time the horses are ready and everything is packed up, but Arthur doesn’t push it, sure he’s seen more of Charles than he should have today already. The sun is much lower, barely clearing the overhang of rock at all, sky fast blossoming purple and pink, the edges of the clouds tinted orange. It’ll be dark by the time they get back to Horseshoe.

They mount up, and leave the poachers’ camp behind. The horses fall back into step together, steady down to the road and then slowly across the Heartlands, sunlight fading in the west. Orange splinters outwards from the apex of the sunset, and Arthur’s reminded of the fractured scars on Charles’ cheeks, wondering what they would feel like under the pad of his thumb.

“Thanks, Arthur,” Charles says eventually, and meets Arthur’s eyes when he looks at him, riding side by side. There’s still something in his expression that makes Arthur feel giddy, in the sort of way whiskey does, or riding so fast you can’t sit in the saddle, like their race together. Whatever it is, it’s softer than before. Warm, instead of burning. “For...today. Sticking with me. It wasn’t...supposed to end like that, but...thanks.”

“Hey, I should be thankin’ you. You taught me a lot today.”

Charles huffs, something close to a laugh, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. Absently he rubs Taima’s mane at her withers, playing with the stubborn hair. “Hopefully nothing about anger management,” he says, quiet.

It’s another emotion Arthur doesn’t think he’s seen in Charles before. And though a part of him is elated at being allowed to witness so much of Charles, see so much of his inner self in such a short space of time and share in it, the frown on his face is painful. It makes his heart hurt. “Hey,” he says, voice still worn from shouting at the poacher, still snagging in his chest. “You said it yourself, it’s what they deserved.”

“Maybe. But that doesn’t give me the right to...to kill them. Killing men I don’t agree with just because I’m angry, that’s not right. I should...be better than that.”

Arthur frowns. Ponders. He’s never been one for too much thinking. The morality and ethics of the world they live in are better left to smarter men than him. But he knows enough to be sure Charles is being hard on himself. There isn’t any better man than him. “Seems to me you got more right than anyone to be angry.”

“Everythin’ you was telling me today. Everythin’ folks like me have done, and are still doing to this country. To the people that was here thousands of years before us. _Your_ people. That...that ain’t the sorta thing you can discuss with folks, y’know? Those men… They ain’t here to be convinced, or reasoned with. No words is gonna change men like that.”

He swallows, rubbing the back of his neck. Trying desperately to find the right words, to fix the sullen stoop in Charles’ shoulders. “I’d… I’d be angry too. Hell, I _am_ angry, you saw that. I...I don’t know if it’s my place. To be angry. But fuck if I ain’t. They was killing those bison knowin’ it was just another way to starve an’ murder Indians. Destroy whole...cultures. Languages. History. And I ain’t even someone who...knows culture or language, or history. Or politics. Or is smart enough to understand it. And you- Mister Charles Smith-” 

Arthur gestures weakly with his reins, desperate, as if Charles can help him out of the hole he’s digging. “You’re so- Damn it, Charles. You’re the best man I know. And I know that ain’t saying much considerin’ the company I keep, but you are. I been angry, but I can’t even imagine how angry you are. _Always_. How...agonising it is, seein’ what we saw today. Listening to those men.” Arthur spits the words like venom, lips curled. “Livin’ in this world.”

They approach Twin Stack Pass once again, the sunset laid out in glorious colour beyond. This world. So beautiful, if not for the people that live in it. Arthur glances at Charles. Some of them, anyway.

It’s quieter so late in the day, save for Arthur’s low drawl and the horses’ steady walks, the busy chaos of the afternoon waning just like the sunlight, birds flocking to roost, the deer and antelope moving on for the night. The sky is silent, waiting for the owls to wake and hunt, and the plains fall quiet too, shadow from the east spreading out to steadily cover the bluffs, the rocky plateaus, the steppes and savanna. They’re just in front of the encroaching night, early stars left in their wake and the kaleidoscope sun ahead.

Charles is watching him, listening to him ramble. Arthur can’t tell if he’s making any sense of it, unreadable as ever. He sighs, staring out over the plains for a moment, trying to recapture whatever point he was intending to get across in the prickly pear and grama grass. If there even was one.

“My point is,” he says, inspecting Magpie’s saddle horn, fiddling with the leather of her reins, picking the stitching with his thumb. “I don’t know if...it’s right to have killed them. But I reckon...there’s a lotta things that ain’t all right or all wrong. It ain’t simple like Dutch says. What they was doing though? That was…ignorant at best, mass murder at worst. And with...everythin’ you was saying today, how...important the bison are? How few there’s still living. Everythin’ about your mom’s people. You ain’t gotta be ‘better’. You ain’t gotta be any less angry. And you wasn’t...just killing ‘cause you was angry. Not at all. Not from where I was standin’, anyhow.”

Arthur sighs again as he stops talking, attention still on the leather in his hands, soft and pliant from years of use. He’s not smart enough to talk about these kinds of things, revealing what a complete fool he is so plainly. And even if he was smart enough, his voice isn’t exactly welcome in a discussion on the subject. Not like Charles’ would be. Rightly. What right does Arthur have to speak about it? He frowns to himself, concerned he’s overstepped. None.

“Sorry,” he says quickly, guilt already twisting in his gut. “I wasn’t...meanin’ to ramble on about...affairs I got no right to speak on. Just...you ain’t gotta think like that. You’re the best of us.”

To his surprise, Charles smiles, first up at the sky, and then at Arthur, breath huffing as he chuckles.

“What?”

“You.”

“Me?”

“You’re...something else. An enigma,” Charles says, shaking his head slightly. His tone is soft. Endearing. “Mister Morgan.”

Arthur blinks at him, brain taking a while to catch up. “It weren’t just the drink talking last night,” Charles says, bemused, trying not to watch the cogs turn in Arthur’s head, obviously confused by the reaction. “That’s just... _you_. You’re just...kind. Thoughtful. _Good_. You were listening to everything I said today, and you took it to heart. And so...stuck in self-doubt, you say all that - probably the nicest, most genuine thing anyone’s said to me in over thirty years - then you apologise for it!”

Again, Arthur blinks. “I gotta apologise again if that mess is the nicest thing anyone’s said to you in that long. That’s fucking tragic.”

Charles laughs out loud, breaking into a wide grin. “I been alone a long time, so...”

“So even I’m an improvement?”

“Ha. I’d say so.”

His smile is hard to stifle, Arthur laughing too, cheeks feeling hot. He scratches his chin, rubbing absently at the itch of his stubble as he tries to process what Charles said. It’s been a long couple of days, although he’s not sure he’d be any better at receiving compliments on any other day either.

Still, the relief is welcome. Warm and wonderful. Butterflies in his stomach. 

“Thanks,” Charles says eventually, the sunset painting his features gold. “For listening. And...being here.”

“Sure,” Arthur replies, mapping the perfect lines and curves of his profile, trying to commit them to memory, unable to help admiring the thickness of his torso too, his arms and thighs. “It was fun. Thanks for askin’ me to come.”

“Sure,” Charles says, mimicking him with a soft smile. “We better get back. It’s a lot of work just to get the meat prepared, let alone everything else.”

“Mm, I’m starving. Saddlebag rations got nothin’ on that cornbread you made.”

“Maybe I’ll be persuaded to make some more,” Charles says, chuckling. “You ever had pemmican?”

“Can’t say I have.”

Charles hums, pushing stray hair off his forehead. “In Lakota, it’s called wasna. I’ll bet you’ve never had anything like it. We’ll make some,” he says, and chuckles at the look on Arthur’s face, also golden in the sunlight, hair a halo, just as it had been that morning.

“I got no idea what it is, but let’s do it. Lead the way, Mister Smith.”

“As long as you’re following, Mister Morgan.”

The horses jog onwards into the sunset, two, and two together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i should probably explain the walt whitman thing
> 
> while playing rdr2, i kept researching things i thought of or wondered about, for example, the male/male relationships of the era. at some point, i came across the idea that men who were interested in men would often quote walt whitman, the 19th century poet, due to whitman's supposed preference for relationships with other men. quoting his work or his name was a way of subtly finding other men who were into men. apparently.
> 
> do you think i can find the source i read for this info so i don't look like a nutter? nope. but i reckon whitman's poetry fits the era pretty well anyway :>


End file.
